Central Pacific Advances

Abstract

At the Casablanca Conference in January 1943, the US Navy’s plan for a Central Pacific advance — Operation Granite — was approved by the CCS and by Churchill and Roosevelt. During early 1943 the Navy acquired the means to undertake this colossal task. No fleet had ever conducted prolonged operations over such huge distances (dotted only with tiny atolls). New fast battleships had entered service, and some of the victims of Pearl Harbor had been refitted, and while too slow to operate with the carrier task forces, were to play a vital role in the landings through off-shore bombardment. Most importantly, the new generation of aircraft carriers was now available: the small Independence class and the large Essex class. The latter were capable of carrying up to 100 aircraft. By October the Pacific Fleet had six of them. Moreover, it now had a fighter, the F6F Hellcat, that could out-perform the Zero. Problems with the American torpedo had been rectified. US industrial production was getting into full swing, and the Navy was beginning to put together the components of the ‘fleet train’ (oilers, floating dry-docks and other support vessels) that would enable the carrier task forces to operate over the vast Pacific, striking at the enemy and providing an air umbrella for the new fast attack transports and landing craft.